I’ve only watched the first 30 minutes of the first episode, so I can’t answer this question. I do say that these first 30 minutes leave me suspicious. The opening narration begins at 6:20 in the online video. Bob Dylan’s A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall plays in the background.

6:20 Narrator: America’s involvement in Vietnam began in secrecy. It ended, 30 years later, in failure, witnessed by the entire world. It was begun in good faith by decent people, out of fateful misunderstandings, American overconfidence and Cold War miscalculation. And it was prolonged because it seemed easier to muddle through than admit that it had been caused by tragic decisions, made by five American presidents, belonging to both political parties.

History Channel is pioneering the con artist entertainment genre. In this genre, people make outrageous claims and, through a mix of charisma, innuendo, circumstantial evidence, dramatic reenactments and music and engaging graphics, titillate viewers to buy or at least entertain those claims. For example, American Ripper is likely the third or fourth program on the History Channel which claims to have identified “Jack the Ripper.”

The flagship show of this genre is of course Ancient Aliens. Its host and producer Giorgio A. Tsoukalos is the most endearing, interesting, earnest and famous of the “con-artists” on TV today (other than some of our politicians). The most amazing feature to me is that, after watching him for years, I still can’t say for certain that he is not a true believer.

In Season 12’s 9th Episode, The Majestic Twelve, interviewees claim that the secret intelligence agencies of the United States were created in the late 1940s to control information about and contact with extra-terrestial visitors. The group which President Truman formed to recommend policies towards extra-terrestials, Majestic Twelve, morphed into secret agencies which assassinated President John Kennedy, who had considered sharing information about extra-terrestials with the Soviet Union. When Linda Moulton Howe claims that most government covert action in the last 70 years has been to protect information about extra-terrestials, even Giorgio has a little bit of trouble believing it, and, for a brief moment, my belief in Giorgio’s belief in the existence of intelligent extra-terrestials’ intervention in earth’s history was weakened. I captured the screenshot below (time 26:18), but watch the episode.

One must congratulate the writers for hitting so many racist images in a 30-second scene!

Update: The defendant in the episode is a store owner who claimed justifiable homicide. The character Phil Servino, we are told, has investigated 19 cases of police killings and found all justifiable. The story strikes too close to home these days. I think the racist imagery in the scene I highlighted is meant to set up the idea that the victims “deserved it.” Sadly, many people continue to believe that about black men like Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Eric Garner.

Your naivety demeans you. Those whose fortunes I have saved are free to think ill of me, to shun me at the club, to divest themselves of their sullied funds, in tender compassion to give every squalid pound to their stricken fellow men. Do you imagine they will? No. Because love and justice are not the primal forces of our world, sir. Gold is the primal force of our world. You believe, as Sol did, in right and wrong, but there is only profit and loss. You believe in laws, but there are only ledgers.